Huge overusage bill from telecom

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timbosan

2161 posts

Uber Geek

#363367 4-Aug-2010 23:51

chiefie: Very sound and detailed advice given by DigitalDivide there.

+1.

Your the kind of person needed at every ISP and Telco! If there where more of you around, we wouldn't have so many compliants, issues, or worries when things to go wrong, especially with billing.

Benoire

2799 posts

Uber Geek

#363400 5-Aug-2010 07:10

Charles000: My girlfriend turned her Macbook on the other day, for the first time in at least 6 months. It downloaded a couple of gigs of updates for the OS and software in the background. It took me quite a while to find out why our usage had jumped one morning when I knew neither of us had been doing anything heavy.

That probably doesn't help, but good luck with disputing the charges anyway. If they claim you downloaded 11GB in an hour, that's impossible, even if your house is right next to the exchange. 24Mbps (theoretical maximum of ADSL2+) gives a total of 10.5GB over an hour.

Does that theoretical speed include full speed upload? Perhaps the 11Gb was made up from download/upload together in the torrents the OP was using at the time?

ZollyMonsta

3009 posts

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Trusted

#363410 5-Aug-2010 07:43

chiefie: Very sound and detailed advice given by DigitalDivide there.

Check out my LPFM Radio Station at www.thecheese.co.nz - Now on iHeart Radio, TuneIn and Radio Garden

As per the usual std disclaimer.. "All thoughts typed here are my own."

webwat

2036 posts

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Trusted

#363697 5-Aug-2010 15:09

How did you go testing for viruses? Do the modem lights flash like crazy when you're not using it? Did you restrict the upstream speed of the torrent (you can set it to 3-4k if you need to)?

What speed is your modem connected at? If you cant find the modem's ADSL stats then ask telecom to tell you. Most people are connected between 2Mbps and 18Mbps for the downstream speed. The upstream speed is maximum 1meg so just focus on the downstream.

Time to find a new industry!

digitaldivide

94 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#363817 5-Aug-2010 18:43

timbosan:
chiefie: Very sound and detailed advice given by DigitalDivide there.

+1.

Your the kind of person needed at every ISP and Telco! If there where more of you around, we wouldn't have so many compliants, issues, or worries when things to go wrong, especially with billing.

The truth is that I've worked in telco across Yahoo, MSN, Telecom NZ Retail and Mobile, Alcatel-Lucent, number portability, CDMA, WCDMA, Ericsson, Telstra... on/off for 10 years across broadband and mobile products - T1, T2, T3 support, Product Management, Service Delivery .... I've seen three different CEO's while at Telecom NZ (rahrah..) but in the meantime there's been a bunch of Customers needing help (queue: violin)

In 1999ish I was one of four people at Telecom NZ supporting the first broadband connections based in Christchurch. I remember being the first person to credit a Customer $13k.. try getting that approved...and that was in the first 6 months that ADSL became available.

Note I user the word Customer with a capital C

Me about me.

timbosan

2161 posts

Uber Geek

#363836 5-Aug-2010 19:11

Ah, a fellow Telecom-er! Are you still there by any chance?

swalker5872

60 posts

Master Geek

#363852 5-Aug-2010 19:45

Suggest you have a look at some of the threads on Geekzone, such as this one.
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=66&topicid=59232

Quic Broadband

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Bung

6508 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#363859 5-Aug-2010 19:54

digitaldivide: I remember being the first person to credit a Customer $13k.. try getting that approved...and that was in the first 6 months that ADSL became available.

Note I user the word Customer with a capital C

Hope it felt good, in those days they were paying those credits by Redundancies with a capital R :)

ahmad

1937 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#363861 5-Aug-2010 19:55

digitaldivide I think I love you.

digitaldivide

94 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#363863 5-Aug-2010 20:01

timbosan: Ah, a fellow Telecom-er! Are you still there by any chance?

My legacy remains ... I'm with ALu for winter 2010, off over summer, back with Telecom in autumn next year.

jaxib

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#364182 6-Aug-2010 12:25

Hi Everyone. I got a call from Telecom today saying that they were going to credit the account for the overage for last month and this month - only if we don't ask for help in the future for overage. The guy said that it couldn't have been a mistake in the billing, but they don't think it was us that had caused the usage either?

I will still do those test for virus' and all the other suggestions you all have told me about before I agree to the terms.

Thanks for all of your help, what a bunch of good dudes. I really expected to have to go into battle with Telecom over this and didn't expect them to concede.

Behodar

10522 posts

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Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#364188 6-Aug-2010 12:37

Charles000: My girlfriend turned her Macbook on the other day, for the first time in at least 6 months. It downloaded a couple of gigs of updates for the OS and software in the background. It took me quite a while to find out why our usage had jumped one morning when I knew neither of us had been doing anything heavy.

This is configurable under Sys Prefs > Software Update > Download updates automatically. I think it's very poor of Apple to turn this on by default (it once started downloading updates while I was tethering on a 120 MB plan!).

Jaxib, you might want to check that option on your system.

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